Game consoles will be extinct after next-gen, says Jaffe

The God of War and Twisted Metal creator sees the next round of hardware as the very last

David Jaffe is never one to hold back an opinion, so after we talked in depth about the free-to-play market and his next project at his new San Diego studio, we also decided to pick the designer's brain on the Wii U and how the console market is shaping up. As it turns out, Jaffe isn't very excited by Wii U and he ultimately thinks consoles in general will soon be dinosaurs.

"I don't see the Wii U and say 'oh my God I have to have that.' But with new hardware that's usually the case; the software's going to drive it. Or it's like Apple and the hardware is so elegantly designed that it's like, 'Oh they make toilet plungers? I'll buy it!' I played some games, I enjoyed Rayman... it's not like I'm knocking it but I would say that I wasn't blown away by any individual piece of software that was exclusive to Wii U," Jaffe commented.

"I'll go on the record and say that the next generation of hardware will be the last consoles. And they should be"

David Jaffe

"But their audience isn't necessarily core gamers like you or the analysts you talk to, so I could still see Wii U being mainstream. But honestly though, if I had to put money down, I think that the iPhone and the iPad has basically taken the market that was so excited by the Wii and so I think Wii U is not going to be anywhere near the success of the Wii. But I don't f***ing know - I mean I thought PSP was going to clobber the DS. I'm in the industry, I make a living in the industry, but I have no track record of guessing this shit."

Jaffe wanted to make it clear that he's not bashing Nintendo. "Nintendo's a great company and they're creative and artistic and I wish them well. They're forward thinking and I always want people like that to succeed," he continued.

The bottom line is that Jaffe believes consoles are on their last legs.

"So while I don't think it's going to do as well as the Wii, I don't think any of the consoles are going to do as well as they used to. It's a declining market, I think. That doesn't speak ill to any of them as pieces of hardware - it just speaks about the fact that the industry has changed, the business models have changed and the world has gotten even smaller with smartphones and tablets and the internet, and stuff like Gaikai and streaming."

"Look, consoles are going away. I think in 10 years - probably sooner, but 10 years is always the safe thing to say so you don't sound like an idiot - but here's what I'll say: I'll go on the record and say that the next generation of hardware will be the last consoles. And they should be," Jaffe asserted.

"The asteroid has hit the Earth, the dust cloud is covering the sun and the dinosaurs are on the way out"

David Jaffe

"It doesn't mean you won't buy a piece of hardware from Sony, but you'll probably buy a television that streams the stuff. And you'll still have Sony, loud and proud and strong making these great, big, epic games like God of War and Uncharted, and they'll be making great little games like Sound Shapes, but they'll become more like movie studios for video games. I'll be able to stream in the next Uncharted and Plants vs Zombies and you won't even think about it. It'll just be like I can watch a public access show on my TV or I can watch Avatar."

Jaffe concluded, "So this is the last generation of consoles coming up. I'm going to go out on a limb, because why the f**k not? I don't care if I'm wrong, I'm not a business guy. I think next-gen consoles are going to do 40 percent of [the sales volume] of the current gen hardware."

"The asteroid has hit the Earth, the dust cloud is covering the sun and the dinosaurs are on the way out - but not the games! We'll always have great games and bleeding edge graphics... it's just going to be a new delivery mechanism."

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to sound off in the comments section.

Sign up for The Daily Update and get the best of GamesIndustry.biz in your inbox.

An interesting assertion, but, as Mr Jaffe points out, he works in the industry but he has no track record of guessing this shit.

I don't think anyone has a track record of guessing what's going to happen; even the economists amongst us get a little flustered when they're asked to look at the gaming industry and come up with ten-year projections.

I think consoles will survive, but not as they are. The Western market cries out for simplicity over complexity and, while the PC will inevitably raise that bar high over our heads, people will always feel comfortable with the multimedia device that does a few things well instead of a thousand things brilliantly.

The tech will undergo a radical shift, as it has to, but the upshot of my point is that in ten years we'll still have simple little boxes in our homes that are designed for gaming first and foremost, with tech parameters that can make life as easy for new developers as they make life (occasionally) hard for advanced developers.

I think Diablo 3 is a good counter argument for why consoles won't be going "stream-only", Its not practical for the consumer, for example why would I pay to stream a game over buying it on a disc? For me there's no benefits and plenty of negatives the main one being lagg, it doesn't matter how fast your internet connection is there will always be some sort of disruption which will effect your game. and that alone makes the premise of stream-only null and void.

@Alex: I personally hope that consoles continue on in some way, shape or form as I've been a console gamer for life and have always preferred them over PC gaming and now touch screen device gaming as well. That being said, you mention that"..people will always feel comfortable with the multimedia device that does a few things well instead of a thousand things brilliantly." What do you see as your grounds for that statement?

Lately there are people who claim that there is a trend of commoditization wherein specialized devices are ultimately squeezed out of their own markets by swiss-army-knife type do-it-all devices - the iPhone having become the go to device for music listening and photo taking being a case in point in relation to the personal music player and camera markets. What leads you to think that console gaming won't fall in line with this trend?

No one can predict what will happen within the next 5 years.Should modern society progress technologically, perhaps there will be a valid argument that - ok, the future console might be some sort of amalgamated TV setup box perhaps. Deat hof consoles though, sounds highly premature. There is a higher chance of Euros being broken up

It is pretty obvious that consoles in the manner of the PS3, Wii and 360 are an outdated and unsustainable business model.
They are being undone by the App Store, digital distribution, free to play and a plethora of more lifestyle friendly platforms such as tablets, smart TVs and smartphones.
This does not mean that they are dead, just that they need to adapt to the new realities of the market.
I am sure that the executives at Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are well aware of this and will not behave like turkeys preparing for Christmas. They still want to keep their shares of the cake that they have built up over the years.
Microsoft are in the strongest position because of Live and because they are integrating across console, tablet, PC and smartphone. Old fashioned console gamers may not understand the importance of this until they see it realised in major games. But it is coming.

The elephant in the room is Apple. Already they are the biggest player in mobile gaming in the world. Now they want to repeat this in the living room, using the same business model that has been honed and which works so well for them in mobile.

What is utterly undeniable is that we are right in the middle of a complex revolution. 2007 was a long time ago in game industry history.

MS are moving live into windows 8 so there ready for a more mobile future, Sony are doing the same launching there playstation mobile platform on android, my only long term fear is for Nintendo right now, who seem to be burying there head in the sand a bit.

I personaly hope the career of this guy get extinct too. I'm not fergiving how he lied to everyone when he spoke about the European censorship of Twisted Metal.

Or maybe he didn't lied and "just one second in the introduction was cut" actually means "more than 65 secs. of cinematics only in the first campagn was cut".

Now seriously: This guy may be right or not, but it is all about guessing and explaining reasons, right now there is no way to know 100% if that will happen or not and you know... back then people said that T.V would kill cinema and radio, or that e-mail will destroy the regular post services...

Over the last 5 years, a surprising number of people (including some high profile industry people who would be somewhat embarrassed if I mentioned them here) predicted there would be no next generation (i.e. Xbox 720, PS4) or that it would be so materially different (e.g. multiple, iterative hardware releases) that it would not qualify as a "next generation".

This is guy is a troll. Spend past decade or so developing for the ps3 and now he is saying they are going to be extinct. Simply to grab attention and makes his new project popular. Personally there is not better way to play than staying relaxed on the couch with 55" tv in front of you a controller in you hand and PS3 plugged in the tv insert blu-ray and start playing. Portable games are there simply so you can do something while you are all alone in a crowd of people after all that is why smartphones have been invented

The problem with your post is this: "a controller in you hand and PS3 plugged in the tv insert blu-ray and start playing"
What happens when the TV will do the job without needing a console? Because that is what is coming.

It's a safe bet consoles won't be able to exist in their current form for much longer. Personally, I don't think they will die out completely--despite a myriad of challenges, the market for consoles has grown from generation to generation, because consoles have changed from generation to generation. Granted, there are more challenges than ever facing consoles, but the market for videogames (in general) has also exploded since 2006, and it was the two Nintendo consoles that began this growth spurt, before companies like Apple, Facebook, Zynga and others added mentos to the proverbial coke bottle.

As it is, the company I worry most about is Sony. They had the vision and resources to 'save' the PS3 from its poor start, but their lack of publicity for Vita at E3 was alarming. It definitely had some great content, but the fact Sony didn't feel the need to publicise their struggling handheld, alarmed me greatly. Nintendo were arguably the first company to realise that their console business needed to begin to change--they dropped out of the graphical arms race that had come to define the console business, and offered something completely different.

Their ability to make that move remains. The question is, how quickly will Nintendo adopt new market realities? It's popular to think of them as the most ancient of dinosaurs, but they're happy to support free to play on Wii U in the future, even if they don't do so with their own games. They're starting day and date retail/digital releases, and they're even including their own social network with Wii U that will be cross-platform, and can be accessed from PCs and smartphones. The fact they're offering a home console that can be at the centre of the living room, but not need to compete with the living room television through playing on the Game Pad, is a much better idea than many realise. It keeps videogames central to the household, without making them intrusive. The simple fact Nintendo have now sold somewhere in the region of 18-20 million 3DS units proves (for me at least) that so long as there's a market for games dedicated devices, and Nintendo can evolve and offer compelling software (which they have done time and time again, none more so than in the last 6 years), then Nintendo as a console manufacturer will survive. What's important about 3DS was that to turn it around, Nintendo was forced to adapt to market realities--cut the price, improve the online and digital distribution, and make sure the blockbuster games are there at the right time. Valuable lessons to learn before Wii U launches.

And as Bruce rightly points out, Microsoft are already moving to a cross-device service through Windows 8 and ideas like SmartGlass. That should ensure their survival as a player in the videogames market--but as they cater less for the market that built the Xbox brand, how are they going to fare in the transition to their next machine?

As for Apple and their move on the living room, it will undoubtedly change the game. But changing the game doesn't mean that Apple ends the game--again, I would point to the success of the 3DS. At the right price point, with the right features that adapt to the changing market, with the right software, dedicated games devices can still succeed. How much longer that remains the case is up in the air, but I hope all three manufacturers continue to evolve and at times revolutionise what they offer, because that's the way to remain a strong force in gaming.

I don't get this whole "Smart TV" idea. For me, the TV is just a screen. The content comes from all different sources, and I'm not going to have a seperate TV for each of those sources, nor do I want to buy a new screen every time the content providing hardware upgrades, when the screen, which makes up most of the bulk, still does the job perfectly well. Building things into the TV is inflexible and pointless.

A TV that contains an upgradable software client for cloud gaming is more flexible than the current set up. I'm not convinced that's the way things will go in time for the next+1 generation, but I am convinced that's where things will go.

Once your net connection is fast enough, and you can play all of the latest AAA games instantly without needing to worry about format or going to the shops to buy a disc to put in, why would 99% of players need a console at all?

@Anthony - If everything's streamed and requires so little hardware, surely the hardware on the consumer end could probably fit into a device the size of a USB drive and just sit discreetly behind your TV? Then I could take it out and plug it in another TV in another room, even one I could have bought ten years ago. And if some new feature came out that required a hardware change, I buy a new USB dongle. What is the benefit of building it into the TV itself? You're just forcing me to buy a new TV every time I want to change something that's not software. There's nothing to stop you bundling the hardware with the TV. My point is, a TV is a huge device that I don't want to replace or move if I don't have to. Unless mine breaks, why would I want to replace it with something which could easily be achieved by a miniscule piece of hardware at a vastly cheaper price? There are already TVs with DVD players built into them, yet (as far as I can tell) they're not very popular.

We actually got a huge competition among Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. What will happen if you just need to stream your game on your tv, you'll got a sony loud channel and rent it from them? is it that simple? It means that other companies will get in and sell games too. More competition = competitive prices = less revenues for actual hardware builders.

Another thing that Im thinking about is about hardware possibilities. Kinect, ps move and wiimote require hardware receptors to work. What is going to happen if console don't exist anymore? TVs will require firmware to make them work, so TVs will become console hardwares no?

Streaming video games will have no technology restrictions, increasing the gap between 100 millions dollars productions and the rest of the world.

Finally an honest assessment. We do not need to wait any longer. This is the time for true Next Gen. After my 30 years in this industry (Anyone want to discuss Frogger for the 2600?) I agree with the following vision;

Cloud, Tablets, TV (Monitor), Phones, Docking Stations for downloadable games, social networks and content. Internet in house and outdoors. iPad can dock into a controller configuration as can an Android or an iPhone or a Windows phone. Touch screen as with PC keyboards do not have to be a problem. Accessory companies can supply all of the docking and controller accessories.

Retailers will sell packaged games that plug into docking stations or game cards that you activate at store register and download at home.

Networks will have multiple sections;
1. Downloadable full games for PC, tablets, dedicated game devices (DS or Vita) or phones.
2. Rental games with 2 day, 5 day or full game purchase options.
3. Free to Play games for download that use monetization to continue.

I believe that MS and Sony are ready and capable. Will they react in 2013? Why wait for 2016? Someone even a different HW player should start now. Can someone call me and let's make this happen. I am all in! 732 740 7120

I see myself wanting to play a AAA blockbuster with stunning visuals for the next 10 years and I want to play it in front of the TV.

Thing is: a TV eventually might stream data, might record my shows, might run some browser games or might even run streaming games services like Gaikai - hell, maybe it will even talk to me (wherever Apple wants to put Siri into). But my TV won't render my AAA titles at any point in time in the future since it's a TV and not a console. No manufacturer would integrate current Xbox or Playstation hardware in their TV sets because nobody would buy them. Gamers will always opt for separate machines and non gamers would not even consider to pay 300 bucks more for something they will not use.

That is why "high-end" consoles will never go away, given that I won't be the only one with a desire to play AAA titles on my couch in the future.

He's right! Look at Onlive, they proved with the proper internet bandwidth we won't need consoles and if we don't need consoles why the heck would Sony Microsoft and Nintendo gamble on creating next gen consoles?

Its all about the experience and I'm totally looking forward to the day when I don't need three consoles in my front room to play all the games that I like.

As long as I can download and own a copy, much like movies, music and TV shows, I dont care if everything goes digital. I want to be able to download a game, save/transfer it on some sort of disk media and use it on any device, much like an MP3 or mp4 video.

I really hate it when games like dragons crown, hardcorps uprising or Rayman origins, that can easily run on PS3 as well as a VITA, they try to sell you a version for each.

I like that in music, movies and TV shows you can convert them to any format to be used on any device.

However, i usually like to purchase music in .WAV or .AIFF versions because I like having the uncompressed PCM version of it, that I can later do whatever I want with it.

If video games are to become like a cable channel service, were I pay to play, then Im done gaming.

However, nothing, not cable, not digital downloads, streaming or music services like pandora or HULU has prevented people from wanting to own there own copy to have in backed up optical disk media or personal harddrives. A copy they own and can enjoy for years to come and not rely on servers, companies, corperations or services that may one day cease to exist, along with their catalog of media and games.

Renting is fine for alot of people, but people like me? I like having my own copy that nobody can tell me how or when to use it. And Im ok with paying for it. But now a days I feel people are being soled licenses to use goods. You pay for them, but they arent really yours. And i feel the move to the cloud will further give corperations more control over how people use content. In which case sucks because it really isnt yours.

If sold as a service then this would not be relevant... but I dont like the idea of spending money on something I dont own. Or maybe the future is a place were people dont own anything and what you pay for is to expirience things at the moment.

Movies, music, TV, books, how we communicate, socialize and share, will be done through a single device with no buttons or anything, a piece of glass in an empty room and through that glass our lives will be dictated through a cloud of ideas and visions of reality that are fed and broadcasted by corperations such as Apple and SONY.

Our reality will become there wish. And they belive that what they wish is whats best for everyone else, everyone will belive it. And while they become richer, we live a life in isolation.

Wow, just the future I want... video games will sure be so much better then what they are now...

I know I got off topic, but can anybody here tell me how the move to cloud and streaming services for games will affect the fact that you can actually own it and have a copy.

Honestly as much as I love console gaming, I hate having to own a different console for each company that makes games. Or the same game for every different piece of hardware. i wish things could be like it is with movies, that you have a machine that can play all movies and standardized format and any movie company can make movies for it and resources are better used to make games rather then make hardware. A board can be made, Apple, Intel, AMD, Nvidia SONY, Nintendo and Microsoft can have a board and they can come to a consensus on how video game hardware should be approached and standardized.

I agree its a pain to have multiple formats. I just dont like the idea of streaming, i dont mind paying a bit more to have my own copy. I do it for movies and music. Im a DJ and I purchase my music in uncompressed PCM file format from beatport.com and Junodownloads. I buy my movies on bluray disc or use iTUNES to download the HD version. And to put on an iPOD I just compress it myself to be used on that device.

Im ok with everything existing on a cloud and being streamed, but i prefer to have my own copy. And I wonder if there is space in the future for that. because right now Diablo 3 exists on Blizzard servers. i cant even play it if Im not online. And if every game is gonna be like this its gonna suck, because im just one of those weirdos who has a life not always conected to the internet.

Look at Onlive, they proved with the proper internet bandwidth we won't need consoles

But have they really? How many people use streaming services like OnLive, instead of buying a console? Obviously it's early days, and it may very well be that streaming comes to dominate in future, but it's far from proven that console gamers are going to migrate to these services.

And if they don't migrate to these services, then all this talk of TVs or iPod docking stations replacing consoles is nothing more than fantasy.

People also forget that streaming does have limitations, such as latency. That might be acceptable for single-player games, but does it work well for online multiplayer games that require quick reaction times (Halo, COD, etc)? Given that network latency, and even the latency between a controller press and action being taken on screen is already an issue with console titles, I'm skeptical.

For quite some time now many voice concerns or their reasoning why the next console generation is or shall be the last one.
Why is everyone so obsessed to call game consoles dinosaurs and see their extinction?
All those voices have yet failed for me to explain how they envision a gaming world will work without consoles in 10 years.

I fully appreciate the next cycle of the game console generation and I am looking forward to not only better graphics but also new innovations in gameplay, new services and inter-connectivity features that bring gaming and its content beyond the game consoles.
Services are the key and the main reason why dedicated game consoles will not go extinct now or in the near future.

I agree that this will (and should) probably be the last console generation that follows the model that has been in place from the NES to the current gen machines.

It's a mistake to treat all the elements of that model as a monolithic entity, though.

Selling games on physical media is in gradual decline (although only at the speed that the digital infrastructure can come in to pick up the slack), I don't think anyone would dispute that.

A proprietary hardware platform purely for games is no longer the only option available for mainstream consumers, but then that's always been the case as long as PCs and home micros have been around. £99 for an Xbox/PS3 or £199 for a Wii U that completely removes the issues of convenience and offers experiences that aren't available on any other platform is still a compelling proposition.

And as hardware is becoming commoditised it's becoming cheaper to make entirely new, specialised devices. As much stick as the 3DS and Vita seem to get from analysts, they're only a decent digital storefront away from being the ideal primary games platform for a lot of people.

But most importantly, having a platform owner that understands and is committed to games is still a necessity. The ability to commit to plans in the long term and foster mutually beneficial relationships with many content providers will still be needed to achieve any kind of standardisation or critical mass of users even if all the other elements of the traditional console model fall away. Valve, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft have all historically understood this and I wouldn't bet against any of them in a landscape where platform holders have morphed into content networks.

Aside, I don't think streaming raw video is inevitably going to 'win' any more than HTML5 is going to conquer the universe or next year is finally going to be the year of Linux on the desktop. Games aren't music or TV. The most appropriate tool will emerge for each job.

@Nick Gibson: In fairness, it's only been in the last 12-18 months that the decline of console retail has been seriously taken on board. If relying on retail was the only revenue stream, the future for consoles would look very bleak. I don't think the next gen machines are going to retail at $500+ (and cost $100s more than that to manufacture) again, somehow.

@Dave Herod: Depressingly, I can see forcing people to buy a new TV to access a small computer embedded in it as exactly the sort of thing Apple could do with their brand strength.

The trend of everyone's argument for the death of consoles seems to be entirely predicated on the rise of cloud-streamed gaming.

Don't get me wrong, it has it's place, but it's just not going to be the usurper of traditional consoles that people are claiming within those kind of time spans.

10 years is a heck of a long time in tech, but it's going to take more than 10 years for broadband infrastructure to become ubiquitous enough to the majority of the videogaming world to support it.

Jaffe's comments come as a resident of Los Angeles, where I imagine at his home and office the likes of Gaikai and OnLive are already quite viable. Meanwhile, there's still vast swathes of the developed world where it's just not, and won't be for a long time.

Even within major US cities, the hodge-podge of broadband availability means that while you can get a streamed-game supporting fibre-optic service in one location, only a few streets over you can only get crusty 2mbit DSL.

Whereas a stand-alone console or gaming PC can still serve up best-in-class rendering anywhere there is electricity, and it's going to take more than 10 years before that advantage is eroded to the point of obsolescence.

Cloud-streamed gaming is a nice glimpse at the future, but the expensive physical infrastructure required to support it beyond metropolitan US and Europe has a long road ahead of it.

Latency, latency, latency.
Do most people know what the latency is of the TV set that their console is plugged into?
Maybe they would be surprised by how big a number it is.
And it can easily be more than the internet latency of cloud games.

If you want to see a cloud game working then just play Runescape. An 11 year old game.

I see a bit of a contradiction between the two dominant doomsday predictions that are always repeated on this site.

One is that the future will be cloud gaming, the other is that the future will be f2p.
How do the two work together? Isn't it pointless to rent servers and pay for bandwidth to serve up games that are free in the first place? You would actually lose money on customers who don't choose to make in-game purchases or spend any money. And paying for high-end servers capable of concurrently rendering demanding games, plus paying for 720p HQ streams day in, day out over months, should be a hell of a lot more expensive than hosting a one-time 5GB download.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Felix Leyendecker on 15th June 2012 4:08pm

You know what, lets have this conversation again in 3 years time and if the consoles are still alive, the console sayers can buy us all a drink! Until then, its all waffle. BIG fat waffly speculation which amuses and cajoles but is almost as predictable as a new fangled Llama predicting who wins Euro 2012...

The internet will never be fast enough, Youtube videos only work about 75% of the time for me and Im on a 30Gb connection, and what If I don't want to buy one of these tv's? which will likely cost a fortune

Going all digital is not a good idea... Being connected to play either...

If everything goes digital, they wont be any second hand market for games. This mean less players to buy their games.
Being connected to play means that people wont don't get high connexion or weak signal won't be able to play (yes it still exists)

There are already a lot of discussions about this and people are more or less saying that publishers and hardware builders doesn't want to loose such market segments. Anyway, I hope it won't be true, cause I would hate to give my bank ID to sony, and have to wait for hours to download my games...

Latency, latency, latency.
Do most people know what the latency is of the TV set that their console is plugged into?

Yes, there is latency even in single-player console games. Latency between controller input and action being taken on screen, latency on your television. It doesn't follow that you can just continue to add latency on top of that without having a massive negative effect on your gameplay experience. (At least for certain types of games)

If you want to see a cloud game working then just play Runescape. An 11 year old game.

Yes, and that's all well and good, but some types of games are more susceptible to negative effects of latency than others. 70ms of latency in a game like World of Warcraft probably doesn't affect your game much more than 200ms of latency does. 200ms of latency in a multiplayer game like Halo or Call of Duty is a killer.

People are forgetting that there is a Bandwidth cap imposed by most ISPs. I don't see this digital streaming happening within 10 years, there's no infrastructure that can be readily available in such a short time that wouldn't cost billions to set up and support graphic intensive multiplayer games on a global scale. We're not there yet, not in 10 years.

For being the last of their kind, a purely gaming company like Nintendo, it's like asking them to quit creating hardware and become a multi-platform developer. This isn't happening, their history stretches over a century, they're not SEGA. They'd rather commit seppuku than go this path.

Nintendo however continues to adapt to the changing face of the industry and realize it is once again becoming flooded with the same concepts and this is evident with their new console the Wii U. They believe that streaming games is the future but the physical aspect of games will never fade, most people are inclined to place their investments on what is tangible.

Capping isn't the end of the world when it comes to streaming. Obviously it'd be a lot better if it didn't exist (or if the caps were a lot higher).

Since I've moved to Canada I've had to put up with caps, but I can still watch several hours of Netflix a day without hitting my cap. (I do have to bump the quality down if I want to watch a lot of it though)

Matt, perhaps I was hasty in posting such a broad statement, but I believe when it comes to home gaming systems people will generally look for the cheaper option that 'works'.

Consoles are perhaps the best example of this, in that their primary function is to play games and, while Microsoft and Sony are trying to tie them up with a load of secondary functions through 'apps', Blue Ray, and sharing tools, the fact remains that people bought them to play games on.

But they don't play games with maximum efficiency when compared to a multifunctional device like a PC. The current console generation tech is way behind PC capabilities, yet they're still flying off the shelves as a cheap and easy alternative.

I maintain my statement with regards to the gaming market, but I agree that it was far too broad to be applied to consumer habits in general.

Consoles in their current form will not survive; the big question is whether or not they can do what Apple did by adapting so comfortably to the home environment, while maintaining their comparatively cheaper pricing.